Festival brilliance

Well, that’s the Festival over for another year. 50,000 Fringe events; 800 free events. 2.3 million tickets issued, bringing in £3.8 million. Huge and spectacular. But as the last explosion of fireworks lit up the night sky on Monday watched by 250,000 people, my own reflections were good. I’ve enjoyed more variety this year and seen parts of the city’s underbelly I haven’t explored before, as well as the old familiar haunts of the Book Festival and main Fringe venues. And I’ve marvelled at the amazing talent gathered here in one small city.

I’ve tried this month to capture a flavour of each week for you. So, in that spirit, I’ll give you a glimpse into two events this week that were especially commendable in my view.

Every Thursday evening in August, Blackwell’s Bookshop put on an event – Writers at the Fringe – with 4/5 writers introducing their work. Unfortunately I was only free for the last one, but what a feast it was. All five speakers were witty, entertaining and interesting; all stuck to their 15 minutes; all gave tempting tasters of their writing; all were friendly and available afterwards. We had the full gamut from two debut authors to a Booker nominee! In order of appearance: Michael Cannon (reading a short story about being belted as a child), Malachy Tallack (introducing his travel book about places on the same latitude as the Shetland Islands), Carol Fox (reading from her Memoirs of a Feminist Mother – she’s a lawyer and deliberately single mother), John Mackay (talking about his writing as both journalist and novelist), Andrew O’Hagan (reading from his latest book about an elderly lady with dementia and secrets). Hats off to Blackwells for a great line-up.

Then on Friday I went to a show called Austentatious where six young actors performed a Jane Austen-lookalike comedy billed as completely improvised. As we queued we were asked to write down a fictitious name for an Austen novel; then one was picked out of a top hat on stage. The cast were accomplished actors and so funny. I presume they cooked up a rough outine for a plot beforehand, but what skill and quick-wittedness to ad lib as they did. And it was obvious the actors themselves were hugely entertained by the play they were creating. Not surprisingly they were a sell-out.

So that’s it for another year. But how fortunate am I to live on the doorstep of this cultural Mecca. As they say in the world of entertainment: If you aren’t in Edinburgh in August you might as well be dead!